(1) Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to telemedical systems, and particularly to a telemedical system in which keys for encrypting biological data are shared securely.
(2) Description of the Related Art
In recent years, awareness about health has been growing. One example that demonstrates the trend is measures against obesity, and with the coming of aging society, demand for comprehensive medical services has been rising.
However, some are unable to receive sufficient medical attention due to the distance to a medical facility that poses a barrier for visiting the facility for medical examination. In addition, from the perspective of preventative medical care, there is a growing demand for detailed services which enables a user to measure or refer to his/her health condition anytime and anywhere to improve the user's health condition.
Various technical solutions have been proposed to solve the problems and to meet the demand. For example, sensors for measuring biological data such as body weight and blood pressure have been miniaturized and improved in accuracy, which enables sensing of more biological data. Meanwhile, the network technology has rapidly advanced along with the spread of the broadband network such as optical fiber networks, the increase in the number of hotspot access points, and the development of WiMAX. In response to the advancement, it is expected that a combination of the sensor technology and the network technology provides more advanced and convenient medical services. Prospective telemedical services using various telemedical systems include at-home medical examinations by doctor, provisions of a variety of supplemental information upon medical examination through constant monitoring of body weight and blood pressure, and health management by a user by referring to the user's body weight and blood pressure through a computer at home and a mobile phone when the user is out.
However, biological data such as body weight, body temperature and blood pressure is among the most important personal information. Thus, for implementing the above-described telemedical service that utilizes the network technology, it is necessary to prevent the biological data from being stolen, and to allow only the users to refer to the biological data by using techniques such as encryption.
In order to solve the problem, a health management support system that manages biological data by obtaining the biological data through a sensor and transmitting the data to a management server (for example, see Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication No. 2003-76791).
In addition, a contents information providing system that provides diverse information including medical information based on information read from tags attached to goods, although the information being read is not limited to biological data (for example, see Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication No. 2006-228174).
However, in the configuration shown in Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication No. 2003-76791, communication between the biological sensor and the dedicated terminal and between the dedicated terminal and the management center is encrypted, but not between the biological sensor and the management center. Due to this configuration, there is a possibility that the biological data is exposed in the dedicated terminal. In addition, since the key is embedded in the sensor, the key may also leak when the sensor is analyzed.
Furthermore, in the configuration shown in Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication No. 2006-228174, although encrypted communication is performed between the IC tag and the server, there is no description or suggestion for a key management method. Thus, the key may leak when the IC tag is analyzed.
As described above, with the conventional techniques, there is a possibility that an encryption key for encrypting biological data exchanged between a measurement terminal and a server leaks, which makes it difficult to prevent the data from being stolen by a malicious third party.
In view of the above-described problems, it is an object of the present invention to provide a telemedical system that can prevent the biological data from being stolen by a malicious third party by securely sharing symmetric keys for encrypting the biological data exchanged between the measurement terminal and the server.